Chapter 18: S1
* |Preceded by = Chapter 17: The Medium Beginning |Followed by = Chapter 19: Power Station}} S1 is the eighteenth chapter in Gunnerkrigg Court. It starts . Summary This chapter starts with a flashback showing Kat trying to make some friends. The girls she approaches ignore her as they are worried she will get them in trouble. After the flashback, we see Kat and Annie asking Kat's parents for a workshop where they can build Robot a new body. Kat's mother gives them a key to a large empty warehouse that she used to work in. As the girls leave the house, Anja mentions to her husband that she wishes she could accompany the girls, but the adults' "time has passed" and the kids should figure it out. While Kat and Annie are packing to go to the warehouse Kat tells Annie that she has known Eglamore all her life since he and her parents are good friends. Annie asks Kat if Eglamore had ever mentioned anything about a woman, presumably Jones, and mentions to Kat that she thinks Jones is a robot. Then we see another flashback. Here, Kat is feeling rejected because she got a good grade on an assignment, but the other students assume it was because her parents helped her. When we return from the flashback, Kat and Annie are discussing the feasibility of building an android at the train station, and some other kids there start heckling them. Annie tells Reynardine he may scare them away, and he happily turns into his wolf form to chase them. Eventually, Annie, Kat, and Reynardine meet with Robot in a mechanical mouse body and Shadow 2 at the warehouse. Once inside the warehouse, Shadow 2 finds a locked door that Kat's mom didn't give them a key for. Reynardine picks this lock using Annie's lock-picking kit and the five of them descend into the room below, with Annie using her blinker stone as a torch to light the way. At the bottom of the stairs they find a large dark room, and Annie goes back to plug in the flood lights. While waiting for Annie to return, Reynardine shows a sensitive side and reveals that he is protective of Annie. We then enter another flashback where we see Anja crying over Annie's transfer letter. She mentions to Kat that perhaps Kat and Annie could become friends. On returning from the flashback, we see that the room is lined with robots, some of which may be earlier designs for current robots at the school, including one which seems to be Robot's original design, which has the model number S1, where the S stands for Seraph. After examining them, Kat exclaims that the machines are all worthless because they have no electrically driven parts, but Annie explains how she created Robot initially and convinces Kat to try Robot's CPU in one of the machines to see if it works. Although putting Robot's CPU in another robot's body didn't work with the first machine they tried, putting the CPU in Robot's original design, S1, sets off a play. The first thing S1 says when he "wakes up" is "Jeanne!" When Annie asks who Jeanne is, he replies "She died and we did nothing." A (seemingly) scripted fight between S1 and Bullbot follows during which S1 handily defeats Bullbot. After the fight, S1 opens up a hidden shrine to Jeanne, where it is revealed that Jeanne is the Ghost of Annan Waters that Annie met in Chapter 8. In the shrine there is also a picture of Diego. It is assumed that Diego was the creator of all the robots in the downstairs room. Reynardine explains that he believes Jeanne was a soldier based on the portrait and that Diego was a coward who "loved her from afar", which he explains on Chapter 18, pages - . He also explains that Bullbot was likely a representation of someone involved in Jeanne's death. While Robot is returned to his mouse body, Kat speculates that Jeanne died by falling off the bridge and Diego crated the TicTocs to save anyone else from falling off, but Annie mentions that Jeanne probably still wouldn't be down there if she had fallen. When Shadow 2 says that maybe everything that dies by the Annan Waters has to stay there, Annie gives the counterexample of the fairies. Kat then starts considering the means by which Diego's robots are powered, since they are not powered by anything she understands. Reynardine brings up "etheric means" as a possible method of power. Kat scoffs at his proposal, saying that magic isn't a valid explanation (this is the first mention of magic in the comic, as Tom states in the page note ). We then see a flashback showing Kat and Annie's meeting in Chapter 2, except from Kat's point of view. The chapter ends in another flashback which shows Kat and Annie's mothers walking away from the warehouse. Kat's mother talks about wanting to find out how the robots in the downstairs room worked, and Annie's mother talks about wishing Jim was around more often instead of at "'is stupid training." Characters introduced in this chapter *S1 *Boxbot 1 *Several other unnamed version 1 robots including Bullbot and Old Robot. *Jeanne (Named) *Diego Notes and Trivia * After this chapter two pages not related to any chapter was released. They can be found and the next page. 18